Trisquel On A Sugar Toast

Trisquel on aSugar Toast (TOAST from now on) is a live/installable iso image that can be run from a CD/DVD or be used to load a USB drive with data persistence. Some other advanced uses are described below.

In Sugar TOAST, the Startup Disk Creator must be launched from a Terminal session with the command lineusb-creator-gtk

Alternative installations

Virtual machines

Full install to Hard Disk

Use startup boot splash of CD to select install to HD

Install To 4 GB USB-stick

Formatted /boot 500 ext4 / ext4 3300

Boot CD

Install Trisquel

Choose USB /dev/sdb;/dev/sdc;...etc

Boot USB stick and Customize it:

(add and modify activities; .pdf files etc that you want to have loaded in the sugar-journal)

When making a new USB-stick, to clear the Sugar Journal of old entries and to avoid identity conflicts among copies of the USB, enter the command rm ~ rf /.sugar in the Terminal activity. Then shutdown the USB-stick. This will clear all Learner information on the USB and let you start with a fresh install. Skipping this will result in collisions in the Neighborhood view of the Jabber network between separate copies of the appliance. Verify the presence of the .sugar directory by entering ls -a in Terminal.

When cloning a customized USB-stick, in order to keep the Journal and installed .xo Activities, use rm ~/.sugar/default/owner.key* in the Sugar Terminal, and then shutdown the USB-stick. This leaves the Journal entries and removes only the previous Learner's identity key files.

Make .img file

insert 4 GB USB disk in PC

You must replace "(x)" with the appropriate small Latin letter ("a", "b", "c", ...), so the name corresponds to your USB stick.
For example, the name could be "/dev/sdc".
be careful to not mistake your USB stick with another device, because the commands above will delete everything on that device.

You can see which device your USB stick is by typing "mount" in terminal

Bug Reports

Install to disk

You can use TOAST live from a removable media, or perform a permanent install as you do with any GNU/Linux distro. You can select "Install Triquel" in the main boot menu to do so. If you already started a live session, you can manually launch the installer by running "ubiquity" in the terminal activity.

Configure a Sugar-ltsp-server

Create a USB thumb drive

A Live USB thumb drive runs faster and allows the user to keep the data and settings for the next run. To get that, download the iso and burn it on a blank CD. Start a Live session with it, plug your flash drive and open the terminal activity. Run the command usb-creator and follow the instructions to configure your USB drive. If it is FAT formated (the most usual format for these units), the data on it will not be erased, and will remain accessible.

Live CD persistence

You can achieve user data persistence by loading TOAST from a handy USB drive, but you can also use a regular Live CD for that, and it will work in systems with no USB-boot capabilities. You just need to pass the "persistent" parameter to the Live CD kernel (pressing F4 in the boot menu) and have a ext2 (ext3 and 4 will work too) partition labeled "live-rw" available in any disk. It can be a USB flash drive too.

Any data in the /home directory will be stored in the live-rw partition; if you need to install a persistent file outside /home, as a config file or a program, or even install some deb packages, you just need to label the partition "casper-rw" instead. For normal Sugar, use "live-rw".

This method is useful to save space in the thumb drive for persistence data, and also because the persistence partition can be mounted and accessed from other computers. It can be used to have live persistent sessions in systems that cannot boot from USB, but this will work faster if you use the method described next.

USB load helper

Some computers -like Apple's- cannot boot an operating system from a thumb drive, and in some cases the computer is not configured to do so and the user doesn't have the privileges or knowledge to do that, and a CD is the only method for booting a system. As USB images run faster and can provide integrated persistence, you might want to use the Live CD to load just the kernel and run the live session from the faster flash drive instead. You just need to create a Live USB drive using the method described above, and boot the computer with both the CD and the USB drive inserted. Set the computer to boot from the CD, and it will load the kernel and search for USB drives to continue booting from them.

Easy virtualized images

The above methods can also be used in a virtualization application like VirtualBox or KVM. You just need to start a live session using the TOAST iso, format the virtual disk with ext3, label it "live-rw" and reboot. Since then, the virtual disk will store the persistent data. If a new TOAST iso is released, you just need to replace the image attached to your virtualization system.

SD cards support

Using a USB SD card reader you should be able to use the usb-creator tool to load the live image into a SD card. That will allow you to boot the persistent live system in a XO or netbook, or install TOAST in its hard drive. It should also work with other card formats, as long as the computer is able to boot from them.

Updating

To get the latest version of the Sugar activities, just open the updater in the user settings window. To update the Trisquel system underneath, open a terminal and run this commands:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

This procedure will also update the Fructose activities, and it will no interfere with the Sugar updater in any way.